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The Future of the Cognitive Revolution

Edited by David Johnson and Christina Erneling

Cognitive science has been dominated by a model of mental phenomena based on software--or the rules for input, output, organization, and functioning employed by a computer--which is now showing signs of losing its preeminence. In this book 28 leading scholars from diverse fields carefully consider what that think will be the future course for this intellectual movement.

The Future of the Cognitive Revolution

Edited by David Johnson and Christina Erneling

Description

The basic idea of the particular way of understanding mental phenomena that has inspired the "cognitive revolution" is that, as a result of certain relatively recent intellectual and technological innovations, informed theorists now possess a more powerfully insightful comparison or model for mind than was available to any thinkers in the past. The model in question is that of software, or the list of rules for input, output, and internal transformations by which we determine and control the workings of a computing machine's hardware. Although this comparison and its many implications have dominated work in the philosophy, psychology, and neurobiology of mind since the end of the Second World War, it now shows increasing signs of losing its once virtually unquestioned preeminence. Thus we now face the question of whether it is possible to repair and save this model by means of relatively inessential "tinkering", or whether we must reconceive it fundamentally and replace it with something different. In this book, twenty-eight leading scholars from diverse fields of "cognitive science"-linguistics, psychology, neurophysiology, and philosophy- present their latest, carefully considered judgements about what they think will be the future course of this intellectual movement, that in many respects has been a watershed in our contemporary struggles to comprehend that which is crucially significant about human beings. Jerome Bruner, Noam Chomsky, Margaret Boden, Ulric Neisser, Rom Harre, Merlin Donald, among others, have all written chapters in a non-technical style that can be enjoyed and understood by an inter-disciplinary audience of psychologists, philosophers, anthropologists, linguists, and cognitive scientists alike.

The Future of the Cognitive Revolution

Edited by David Johnson and Christina Erneling

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION: What is the Purported Discipline of Cognitive Science and Why Does It Need to Be Reassessed at the Present Moment? The Search for "Cognitive Glue" David Martel JohnsonPART ONE: Good Old-Fashioned Cognitive Science: Does It Have a Future? David Martel Johnson1. Language and Cognition, Noam Chomsky2. Functionalism: Cognitive Science or Science Fiction?, Hilary Putnam3. Reassessing the Cognitive Revolution, Stuart Shanker4. Promise and Achievement in Cognitive Science, Margaret Boden5. Boden's Middle Way: Viable or Not?, Carol Fleisher Feldman6. Metasubjective Processes: The Missing Lingua Franca of Cognitive Science, Juan Pascual-Leone7. Is Cognitive Science a Discipline?, Don Ross8. Anatomy of a Revolution, Ellen BialystokPART TWO: Cognitive Science and the Study of Language Christina Erneling9. Language from an Internalist Perspective, Noam Chomsky10. The Novelty of Chomsky's Theories, Joseph Agassi11. But What Have You Done for Us Lately? Some Recent Perspectives on Linguistic Nativism, Christopher D. Green and John VervaekePART THREE: Connectionism: A Non-Rule-Following Rival, or Supplement to the Traditional Approach? David Martel Johnson12. From Text to Process: Connectionism's Contribution to the Future of Cognitive Science, Andy Clark13. Embodied Connectionism, William Bechtel14. Neural Networks and Neuroscience: What Are Connectionist Simulations Good for?, Sidney J. Segalowitz and Daniel Bernstein15. Can Wittgenstein Help Free the Mind from Rules? The Philosophical Foundations of Connectionism, Itiel E. Dror and Marcelo Dascal16. The Dynamical Alternative, Timothy van GelderPART FOUR: The Ecological Alternative: Knowledge as Sensitivity to Objectively Existing Facts David Martel Johnson17. The Future of Cognitive Science: An Ecological Analysis, Ulric Neisser18. The Cognitive Revolution from an Ecological Point of View, Edward ReedPART FIVE: Challenges to Cognitive Science: The Cultural Approach Christina Erneling19. Will Cognitive Revolutions Ever Stop?, Jerome Bruner20. Neural Cartesianism: Comments on the Epistemology of the Cognitive Sciences, Jeff Coulter21. Language, Action, and Mind, Sören Stenlund22. Cognition as a Social Practice: From Computer Power to Word Power, John Shotter23. "Berkeleyan" Arguments and the Ontology of Cognitive Science, Rom HarréPART SIX: Historical Approaches Christina Erneling24. The Mind Considered from a Historical Perspective: Human Cognitive Phylogenesis and the Possibility of Continuing Cognitive Evolution, Merlin Donald25. Taking the Past Seriously: How History Shows That Eliminativists' Account of Folk Psychology Is Partly Right and Partly Wrong, David Martel JohnsonAFTERWORD: Cognitive Science and the Future of Psychology--Challenges and Opportunities Christina ErnelingCitation IndexSubject Index

The Future of the Cognitive Revolution

Edited by David Johnson and Christina Erneling

Reviews and Awards

"The 25 chapters and related introductions in The Future of the Cognitive Revolution provide one of the finest compilations of current issues and perspectives within cognitive science. . . . [It] is written in clear and accessible language intended for a wide audience. The editors, Johnson and Erneling, provide masterful introductions to book sections and a general Introduction and Afterword that help the reader to have an overview and navigate through the book. The book could be used in an upper level undergraduate course or a graduate seminar on cognition, or subsets of chapters could be easily incorporated into graduate seminars in related disciplines. I highly recommend this book for new entrants into cognitive science as well as for seasoned researchers. This book should not be ignored."--Contemporary Psychology

"[T]he use of any formal language automatizes and standardizes human thinking. From that point of view, the computer is not a model or a partner for the human mind. It is only an invention that . . . supports human mental skills. If we assume that the chapters presented in parts four and five of The Future of the Cognitive Revolution are something that can influence the mainstream of cognitive science, then we can say that cognitive revolution has a future. This future is the realization that culture together with its psychophysical products . . . constitute the environment of individual minds, that we cannot separate human thought from human action in a particular environment: 'All action involves some amount of awareness, as well as vice versa' (270). Over and above all that, I may say that The Future of the Cognitive Revolution is a consistent collection of more than thirty very good papers written by outstanding authors."--Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences